In his intermedia art projects and sound installations,
Bernhard Gal combines sound, light, objects,
video projections and spatial concepts. This publication provides a comprehensive
overview of Gáls artistic output
between 1999 and 2004, documenting Gáls
solo works as well as his collaborative installations with the Japanese
architect and artist Yumi Kori. The book is accompanied by an audio CD
containing previously unpublished sound excerpts from all documented works.

Austrian
composer and artist Bernhard Gál has
been interweaving sound, music, light, and space in intricate, carefully
constructed installations since the late 90s. The monograph Installations
documents these works by means of texts, lavish illustrations and a 19-track
accompanying CD (also available in a CD-only version from Austrian label,
Gromoga). It highlights the breadth and richness of Gáls
soundworld. The unrelenting rhythmic whirrs of an oldfashioned matrix
printer printing out a quotation from the testament of Austrian playwright
Thomas Bernhard turn the spatial layout of the text into a temporal-acoustic
structure. Elsewhere, compelling, layered voice sculptures
derived from interviews conducted by Gál
demonstrate the musical and sonic potential of language. Meanwhile, the
haunting, harrowing belit, a composition for 8 musicians and 16
light sources, stands in stark contrast to Trendy Cell Phone, Yo!,
whose absorbing sonic interplay of shrill, sharp beeps highlights the
performative potential of mobile telephones. Taken together, the tracks
make up an autonomous composition that can be listened to without referring
to the images  for in Gáls
installations the emphasis is on the sound component, which is not permitted
to recede into the background, as is often the case with mixed-media installations.
On the evidence of the photos, however, the visuals are as exquisitely
crafted as the sounds, and it would be a pity to miss out on them. In
the photograph of Oil Paintings, a hidden light source illuminates
lush, softly glowing motifs painted with cooking oil, lubricating oil
and essential oils, which set off the dreamy, tinkling soundtrack to perfection.
Green Voice, one of several collaborations with the Japanese architect
and artist Yumi Kori, was conceived for the four-storey archive
of an old public library in Tokyo. It featured recordings of statements
by local residents as well as the latters light boxes. Their green
booklike shapes glowed eerily in the dark, while the recorded statements,
transformed into a weightless, echoey vocal composition, filled the archive,
connecting the interviewees with the library as a site for the collection
and dissemination of knowledge. An unmissable publication.

Austrian
Bernhard Gal's been 'doing ' cross--media
installations since 1998 and probably even earlier for all I know, and
last year an overview of his work was published in Germany.This CD is
a separate supplement to the big printed catalogue of the same name that
came out in 2005 under the Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg imprint and it comprises
19 excerpts from his mighty past oeuvre. Some of them have already been
heard /received in TSP, for example 'Hinaus::In den.Wald.' came out in
Austria in 2004, and comprised a sonic environment based around the texts
of Adolf Woelfli, the Swiss outsider artist-genius. 'Defragmentation/Red'
and 'Defragmentation/Blue' have also been previously issued, the latter
on Plate Lunch in 2000.This comp is just terriff! Although under ideal
circumstances I suppose you need to hear each piece in entirety and preferably
inside some cold, white-walled art gallery in Europe, this collection
of extracts works very well at home as an audio experience in its own
right. This is largely because it's been edited to produce 'highlights'
of the 'abstract musical qualities of 19 interwoven compositions'. Some
of the early pieces use a lot of voices - voice recordings made into loops,
relooped and layered into the piece, then expanded further in yet more
interesting ways, or distorted into far-out sonic events; each work seems
packed with minimal meaning, stressing its simple points through repetition
and extension. Other works create artificial spaces that you can wander
around in - sometimes even float around in them, as they seem to defy
the normal laws of gravity, and are filled with air and light.Yet another
simply uses recordings of a dot-matrix computer printer, reusing the tapes
until it turns the rhythms of that machine into a form of music. Then
there's 'Klangbojen', which features more familiar field recordings like
birdsong and church bells, and transcends these sources to create a truly
magical atmosphere. In all an extremely interesting, beautiful and highly
worthwhile collection, presenting many aspects of these slow and careful
exploratory sound-art works. Highly recommended.

From
the excellent Kehrer series, this an 80pp hardback, full colour, art book
with CD by, and about, Austrian sound artist Bernhard Gal. The CD is composed
as a self-contained, continuous piece, but track marks find and play those
sections related to each installation. Materials are electronic sounds,
voices, billiard balls, dot matrix printer, pure tones, kettles and other
domestic appliances, spy recordings (in checked baggage), a phone quartet,
ring-tones and environmental sound. 18 works are featured in the book,
some with architect Yumi Kori, as well as an interview with Gal, a biography,
an exhibition list and sonography.

By now
Bernhard Gal should no longer be unknown,
for his work has been released by such labels as Durian, Intransitive,
Plate Lunch, Klanggalerie, Charhizma and now on Gromoga. 'Installations'
is actually a book and CD dealing with the sound installations produced
by Gal over the years, from 1999 until the
present day. Unfortunately, I haven't seen the book, so I can't exactly
comment on the installations, how they look like, or what the ideas are
behind them. I don't believe however that Gal
wanted the CD to be just highlights of the sound portion of the installations.
Taking things a bit further, he chose the most abstract part of each of
the installations (if my count is right, seventeen) sound track and put
them together as one of continuous flow of sound, in nineteen parts. This
brings an utter varied bunch of musics: from the sound of billiard to
a walk in the wood, bells sounds and electronically processed sounds.
This makes this CD into both a fine display of his many talents, but also
something that can hold the attention for its entire seventy-four minutes.
The fact that the installations are still a mystery is, well just too
bad, I guess. This by itself is very fine enough.

Kehrer Verlag has published a long and interesting list
of books on sound art over the years, ranging from
genre-defining theoretical works and extended exhibition
catalogues to artist monographs. These publications
discuss different aspects of sound art, from those
found in silent or nearly inaudible expressions, to clearly
articulated and strong attacks on our auditory brain.
Germany has a particularly strong tradition of sound
art, and Kehrer plays an important role in developing
and presenting discourse that springs from the genre.

(...) are richly illustrated, well designed, delicate
to the touch, and are published in both German
and English. Three of them (Gál, Georgen and
Henderson) also contain CDs with excerpts of the
artists’ works.

Ablinger, Henderson, Kubisch and Gál are all
professional musicians and composers, while Georgen’s
biography shows a fine arts background. These
artists have all reached beyond the constraints of the
common concert situation to be able to focus the
audience on qualities of sound other than timbre and
rhythm, and on different modes of listening. Their
projects are in many ways related to the electroacoustic
project of listening within the sound for
timbral and structural experiences outside of the
pitch-based paradigm, but their interest in context,
reference and the act of listening itself has moved
the sonic constructions away from the specifically
musical arenas and into galleries and other spaces for
installation. The artists share an attention to ‘nonmusical
sound’, and use this focus to interest the listener
in complex auditory situations in quite different
ways.

(...) The book on Bernhard Gál is also edited by Ingrid
Beirer, and features two texts by authors Barbara
Barthelmes and Stefan Fricke, who respectively take
up aspects of Gál's musical production from architectural
and spatial perspectives. In his interview with
Fricke, Bernhard Gál explains that he prefers to have
his works discussed as music, and a CD with excerpts
from the works is included. Gál interests himself in
particular sonic environments, records them and then
composes with the material he has gathered. However,
it is neither the material nor its origin that
attracts the listener’s focus, it is Gál's compositions –
his abstracted formal developments. His intention is
often transformation of certain environments rather
than representation of them, and consequently his
works often border on programme music, where
there is a topic, a perspective, and a particular interpretation
or perception to which the composer wants
to bring attention. Gál works in an abstract manner,
and with the combination of objects and light, in
gallery and outdoor exhibition settings, this programme
intention is often difficult to follow, leaving
the sense of abstraction to become dominant. In this
sense, his works are not tied to the notions of sitespecificity
and creation of place that one often finds
in sound art. Gál sonifies musical ideas, and chooses
visual accompaniment that encourages focus on the
music rather than the acoustic ‘biotope’. Perhaps
paradoxically, this also runs through his works for
architectural spaces, an ongoing collaboration with
the architect Yumi Kori, where existing or pre-existing
architecture is lit with both sound and music, again
with the intention of interpretation.

(...) The installation works presented in these five books
transform visitors into composers, through the individual
processes that we all go through while making
sense of our experiences. And, naturally, these impulses
resonate in us only when they strike something, when
there is something there to absorb the impression. This
is a common denominator for the artists presented in
these five books, and perhaps most striking is nonetheless
the diversity in approaches used. These works
point to representations of artistic ideas where no image
or movement can go – where sound art comes into its
own as a genre. In sum, these books from Kehrer Verlag
are valuable for any perspective that reaches beyond
music as a compilation of spectral variation over time,
because from a musician’s point of view they encourage
us to reconsider what our organisation of sound
impressions can bring of awareness and reflection.